I’ve had some truly horrific things happen to me. Most of us have. Varying degrees (which are totally subjective) and varying experiences – but trauma, nevertheless.

I’ve been offered many opportunities to speak about this trauma, to share my story, speak my truth. At least thirty people have told me what a gift it would be to use my story to connect with other trauma victims and serve them through energy medicine. The best way to describe how I feel about this is the way you feel when watching a cat or dog eat their own puke. Grossed. Out.

I processed my trauma. I therapized it, coached it, journaled it, healed it. Sometimes a new facet of that process presents itself and I deal with it. All I can say is, I don’t want to meet you there. I don’t want to use my trauma, or yours, as the starting point of our collaboration.

I realize most people associate energy work with healing. We call it “energy healing,” and “energy medicine”. Both imply that the work addresses wounds, dis-ease, illness, and imbalance. It absolutely can. Many practitioners do that work well.

However, I have a million gifts. There are zillion jobs I could do, ways I could help, skills I could hone and offer. I won’t try to downplay that. Because YOU have a million gifts, too. You and I have stockpiles of incredible, earth-shaking, breath-taking, world-bettering giftedness. Know this: just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.

You get to discover your gifts and choose how to use them. You get to take on the clients you LOVE working with, doing the work you LOVE to do. You get to carve out the most improbable and specific niche because that’s the work that really revs your engine. You get to gleefully and firmly say “No, thanks!” to 90% of the opportunities to use your gifts, so when the opportunity with just the right vibration comes along, you can put all your energy into saying, “YES!!!”

You don’t need to tell me the story of your trauma for me to believe in your giftedness. You don’t need to exploit your pain to prove the value of your contributions. And you definitely don’t need to spend another second rehashing your past to take action, use your voice, or create something right here and now.

(Note: healing is important. Sharing your story is important. There’s a time and place for it. There’s also a difference between truly healing, taking up permanent residence in your pain, exploiting pain as a marketing tactic, and moving the hell on. Choose wisely.)

This business of energy work is only fractionally comprised of healing. The vast majority of it is actually about what comes next. There’s a beautiful expanse of life after and alongside healing. Energy work is really about supporting your journey into the unknown, it’s about providing you with the energy necessary to receive and build wealth, insights, divine revelations, a super-charged creativity, a strong mind, clarity, power, pleasure, healthy relationships, resilience, and a life fully alive.

As an industry, we’ve relegated energy to healing. Rarely do we bring it into the conversation of business building, of unleashing creativity, of consciously generating wealth, of crafting and curating a life perfect for you – from the brand of underwear you buy to the conferences you attend to the partner you call in to the friends you’re surrounded by to the coffee you drink to the thoughts you think.

The true capability of energy work goes far beyond mending and rebalancing. Energy is the force behind creation. Isn’t that exactly what you need when you’re ready to create? When you’re ready to make something bigger or do better? When you’re gathering a group? When you’re speaking on a stage? When you’re writing that book? When you’re shifting gears in your business? When you’re consciously up-leveling?

This seems so obvious to me, but I haven’t had the words for it until just now. I don’t want to be your healer. There are a zillion healers, awesome healers, capable and compassionate healers.

I want to be your creative collaborator, the person holding a tank of life-force energy when you’re in the midst of making something amazing and you need a reserve to finish, your pleasure-promoter, your door opener, your celebrator, your encourager… an endless channel of energy from which you can draw upon to make the world better and brighter through the use of your gifts.

Let’s stop using pain as proof of giftedness. Instead, let your gifts loose in the world. Let your gifts speak for themselves.